Monday 30 June 2014

Pension Parity Issue : Of Interest To Veterans Who Retired As Lt Col (Select And TS)


Following upon the previous blog post, and in light of  some blog posts read and discussed in recent years, not to forget the very recent news on the OROP matter, it is perhaps in order to highlight some very concrete issues, concerning veterans who retired as Lt Col, that need to be grasped if these are to be subjected to some form of formal representation.

For this purpose, the relevant portions of the relevant blog posts have been linked to, with highlights wherever applicable, at the bottom of this blog post.

Consider the case of a hypothetical veteran wishing to address the matter. Perhaps the first step should be an application by him to the appropriate directorate in respective Services HQs for a rationalisation of the table at Annexure A to MOD Letter No. 1(11)/2012-D(Pension/Policy) as attached to PCDA (Pensions) Circular No. 500 dated 17 January 2013. The hypothetical veteran would need that pensions shown for the ranks of Lt Col(TS), Lt Col and Col(TS) for a service of 26 years or more be fixed at the same level viz., 27795/-.

The grounds for the hypothetical veteran would be very straight forward:
  • I retired in 1979/1989/1999/2003, 'A' retired in Dec 2004/2005.
  • I had put in 26 years of service, 'A' had put in 26 years of service.
  • I was superseded for not getting promoted to the first select rank, 'A' was superseded for not getting promoted to the first select rank.
  • My pension has been fixed at 26265/- in table ibid whereas the pension of 'A' has been fixed at 27795/-.
  • The above fixation of pension is therefore discriminatory and needs to be rectified from due date. (Note : It'll probably now be 01 Jan 2006, unlike OROP which will be effective from 01 April 2014).

The hypothetical veteran would need to be pretty clear in advance of the tone and tenor the services HQs would adopt while responding to a representation on those lines. But their response would at least give an inkling as to what the official reasoning is. It would also indicate what future avenues need to be explored for addressing the anomalous award of pensions.

Ideas and views expressed eloquently elsewhere in blog posts, comments and replies are all scattered and this blogger would like to take the liberty of collating and summarising the same here for ease of reference. The theme chiefly comprises of the need to view the uncalled for post-retirement down-gradation, of those who missed the promotion bus while in service, in light of the following:
  •  Even if super-session was found justifiable on the basis of the organizational structure (the pyramid), the perceived necessity of having some sort of appraisal system (even if flawed) and the need to empower those placed in authority over others ( i.e. the initiating and reviewing Officers) with a means of obtaining conformance (by any means), it was never intended to be a kind of permanent punishment. Its bad effects after retirement have no justification, whatsoever.
  • A superseded Officer more than paid for his error, acts of omission/commission or his plain bad luck, while in service for not having been able to obtain a high enough grading. He had to serve under former peers, even juniors, and never obtained any manner of financial parity with his peer group throughout his service years.
  • After having endured, rightly or wrongly, the trials, tribulations and opprobrium of supersession as summarised above, the superseded Officer still has to his credit the number of years of service he had put in. This is a reality that cannot be washed or swept away. His retirement pension has to be determined keeping that in mind and it, by and large, is actually based on reckonable years of service.
  • The problem arises only when someone with an equal number of years, also superseded, automatically gets a higher time-scale based rank many years later due to some change in promotion policy and, consequently, begins to draw a higher pension than the person who retired in the past, in-spite of all the normalisations, fitments and adjustments done by subsequent pay commissions.
The hypothetical veteran could do worse than obtaining full justifications from the numerous online discussions on the matter for seeking a correction/rationalisation from respective services HQs. Of course he could not quote opinions read on the web in official correspondence connected with his pension, but the basis for a representation would become that much clearer.

Some of the important online notings and discussions that this blogger has come across are linked to as follows :